Iraq delays security law announcement

Prime Minister Iyad Allawi cancelled a scheduled news conference on the law at short notice and an official at his office said no new time for the announcement had been set.

The government had earlier planned to unveil the measures at a news conference on Saturday, but cancelled it at the last minute.

Since Allawi's government formally regained sovereign powers from the US-led occupation a week ago, senior officials have said it would impose tough security measures, reinstate the death penalty and offer a partial amnesty in a carrot-and-stick strategy to take the sting out of a bloody insurgency.

President Ghazi al-Yawar was quoted as saying the interim government had agreed to bring back a 1960s national safety law, which includes provisions against terrorism and breaches of public order, but stops short of full-scale emergency law.

Yawar and other officials also pledged to restore capital punishment, suspended during the 14-month US-British occupation. The penalty could apply to Saddam Hussein and 11 of his top lieutenants if they are convicted by a special tribunal.

The 12 men appeared before an Iraqi judge on Thursday to hear they would be charged over the invasion of Kuwait, ethnic cleansing of Kurds, suppression of Kurdish and Shia revolts, and murders of political and religious foes over three decades.

While vowing to punish Baathists with "blood on their hands," criminals and foreign militants pursuing their own anti-American jihad in Iraq, Allawi also spoke of an amnesty for Iraqis who fought the occupation out of nationalism.

Violence has racked Iraq since the US-led invasion to topple Saddam last year. Insurgents have attacked US forces, Iraqi policemen and oil industry targets across the country.

In the latest attacks, a roadside bomb wounded five civilians in the northern city of Mosul on Monday, police said.

An Iraqi civilian was killed and four were wounded in the southern city of Basra when mortar rounds fired by guerrillas at the main government building hit nearby homes instead.

Iraqi technicians were trying to repair oil pipelines damaged by weekend sabotage attacks that halved crude exports, the mainstay of Iraq's economy, oil officials said.

There was no word on the fate of a Lebanese-born US marine after conflicting statements from kidnap groups which first said they had beheaded him and then denied it.

Allawi said his government's first week in office since the handover had been successful.

"We have witnessed a drop in insurgency activities so far. We hope this drop will continue," he told ABC television.

"I am sure that we will win," said Allawi, whose government shares Washington's view that Saddam supporters and foreign Islamic militants are behind guerrilla attacks.